Budget Alerts

Budget alerts notify you when spend is trending toward a limit — before it is hit. This guide covers setting up threshold alerts, forecast-based alerts, and routing notifications to the right people.

Alert vs. block rules

FORG rules have two primary actions:

• notify — sends an alert but allows the AI call to proceed
• block — rejects the AI call and returns an error to the adapter

For budget alerts, use notify at 80% of your budget and blockat 100%. This gives developers a warning before hitting a hard limit.

Creating a tiered budget alert

// Rule 1: Alert at $800 (80% of $1,000 monthly org budget)
{
  "name": "Monthly budget warning (80%)",
  "scope": "org",
  "window": "month",
  "condition": {
    "cost_usd": { "gte": 800 }
  },
  "action": "notify",
  "notify_channels": ["email", "slack"],
  "notify_users": ["eng-lead@example.com"]
}

// Rule 2: Block at $1,000 (100%)
{
  "name": "Monthly budget cap",
  "scope": "org",
  "window": "month",
  "condition": {
    "cost_usd": { "gte": 1000 }
  },
  "action": "block"
}

Per-team alerts

If different teams have different budgets, scope rules to teams rather than the org:

{
  "name": "Platform team monthly alert",
  "scope": "team",
  "team_id": "team_platform",
  "window": "month",
  "condition": {
    "cost_usd": { "gte": 400 }
  },
  "action": "notify",
  "notify_users": ["platform-lead@example.com"]
}

Daily runrate alerts

Monthly alerts can miss problems that compound over time. A daily runrate alert catches days that are unusually expensive before they inflate the monthly total:

// Alert if any single day exceeds $50 (implies >$1,500/month pace)
{
  "name": "Daily spike alert",
  "scope": "org",
  "window": "1d",
  "condition": {
    "cost_usd": { "gt": 50 }
  },
  "action": "notify",
  "notify_channels": ["slack"]
}

Email notification setup

Go to Dashboard → Settings → Notifications → Email to configure which email addresses receive budget alerts. All org admins are notified by default. You can add individual addresses or mailing lists.

Slack notification setup

1. Go to Dashboard → Integrations → Slack → Connect
2. Authorize FORG to post to your Slack workspace
3. Select the channel where budget alerts should appear
4. When creating rules, set notify_channels: ["slack"] to route to that channel

Testing an alert rule

Before a rule is triggered naturally, verify it works using the rule test tool:

# From the Rules page, click "Test rule" and enter sample signal data:
{
  "cost_usd": 810,       # Just above the 800 threshold
  "scope": "org",
  "window": "month"
}

# A successful test shows:
# ✓ Rule matched
# ✓ Notification sent to: eng-lead@example.com